WATCH LIVE: Lightfoot to Unveil Chicago’s Reopening Plan at 1:30 p.m.

Lightfoot said her guidelines will "complement" Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's plan for reopening the state

Published May 7, 2020•Updated on May 8, 2020 at 1:24 pm

Note: Mayor Lightfoot's news conference announcing Chicago's COVID-19 reopening framework can be viewed in the player above beginning at around 1:30 p.m. CST.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is set to unveil city-specific guidelines for reopening during the coronavirus pandemic.

The mayor will hold a news conference with the Chicago Department of Public Health Friday afternoon, after rescheduling the event from its original date on Thursday.

Details surrounding the new guidelines remain unclear, but Lightfoot said Wednesday her guidelines will "complement" Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's plan for reopening the state, which was unveiled earlier this week.

Pritzker said the state will reopen in five phases and on a region-by-region basis. Currently, Chicago, and the rest of Illinois, are in the second phase of that plan, though some regions could enter the third phase by the end of the month. (Read more on the plan here.)

The Chicago Department of Public Health has documented a surge in coronavirus cases in the city’s Latinx community, which now represents 37 percent of the city’s total cases, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday.

Lightfoot said the city needs to see a decline in cases before it can continue to move forward with easing restrictions.

"I worry a lot about, particularly our micro-businesses. If there's not a solution soon, they're never coming back," she said.

But according to Lightfoot, though the city is seeing progress, "we are not where we need to be yet."

"We can't reopen the city yet," she said.

Chicago health officials say the city still has not reached a peak and cases will likely continue to rise in the coming days.

"We're still at the stage where we're flattening the curve. We're not yet coming down," Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Wednesday.

Arwady said the city is still expected to peak in May, however.

"We are making progress, but we're far from out of the woods," Arwady said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has now revealed details on a five-phased plan to reopen Illinois as the state remains under a stay-at-home order through May 30.

Chicago crossed a grim milestone earlier this week as deaths due to the coronavirus topped 1,000 citywide. So far, the city has reported more than 26,000 confirmed cases since the pandemic began.

Arwady offered a glimmer of hope in the citywide numbers, however.

"At the beginning of the outbreak, we were seeing cases double every two, three, four days," she said, noting however that cases and deaths will likely continue to rise. "We're at the point where we're seeing doubling every 15 days."

Across the state, Illinois health officials reported another 2,641 new cases and 138 deaths on Thursday.

That lifts the state's death toll from the virus to 3,111 fatalities with 70,873 confirmed cases.

The Latinx community in Illinois is testing positive for coronavirus at a higher rate than any other demographic group in Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday. The numbers are similar in Chicago, where officials reported a sharp rise in cases among the Latinx community.

State and Chicago health officials said that numbers in the Latinx community are expected to rise and additional deaths are likely.